Hi Bill,
yes you are absolutely right...actually even as I was typing I was thinking of exactly what you said: "Nobody who does classical music can ignore Beethoven. Or Bach. Or Mozart. "
But I typed anyway being lazy to explain what I actually meant. I did not at all mean that we cant live without art, ... (I for one cant live without music) we absolutely need it. What I meant was that the listener has a choice on who they listen to, and there is so much to choose from, which makes it much harder to stand out as a creator of art. In music there are only rules, but not laws. You can break rules, which is the way great music is in fact made. However in science there are laws, such as Newtons laws or Einsteins gravity, which are valid within a a certain range of conditions and one cannot ignore them as they are inescapable truths about the physical world.
Also about your point: "It is only the modern science-and-materialist attitude that considers nothing except for intellect and logic. "..... I dont think science and art are exclusive, In fact quite the opposite. As you yourself have said many great composers l(ike Saint Saens and Borodin) were engineers or scientists. Even Einstein loved clasical music. I think it is posts like what I wrote earlier that alienate people from science and gives the wrong impression that science is materialistic.
One more point is that most people get by without ever listening to classical music but yet enjoy other forms of music. There is just so many kinds of music that is legitimate art form, particlarly Jazz and Blues. So that makes the burden of the classical composer even greater. If the music is appealing to a particular audience the WILL accept it and listen to it...no one deliberately avoides pleasure or enjoyment!
So, art is as important, probably even more important than science. And there will always be great artists who create works that appeal to the experts and non experts alike. That is the true challenge for an aspiring artist.
cheers
Anand